Preparing for the summer road trip…

Starting to do some small time planning of our yearly European road trip. We depart May 28th and will return late Aug to our hopefully completed new house. We will start the trip from Portugal which is exciting since we’ve never been to mainland portugal, just the island, Madiera. We’ll probably spend 2 weeks total there and make our way into Bilbao, Spain. Either by Train or rental car. We’ve got two kids, a new born and an Au-Pair so it’ll be a bit of a caravan 🙂 We always make it work and we always make it fun. Spain and Portugal will probably take up 3-4 weeks of the trip. The rest will be spent in Poland, Germany and Italy. I was thinking of checking out Estonia for a week too which would at least add a country to my list.

In Portugal, we’ll stay in Lisbon, Porto and maybe see Faro? If anyone has any suggestions, they’d be awesomely appreciated.

After Bilbao, Spain, we’ll probably do Wroclaw, Poland and some more Southern Germany and of course our constant staple–> our fav B&B in Arona, Italy. (Cascina Incocco)

My favourite country is Germany but I’ve literally seen every city in that country and it’s hard to justify spending too much more time there but perhaps we may add Constance to the list this trip on top of Munich. I might go solo in Germany around Aug 10 until my poker tournament in Barcelona on the 20th.

I am digging the new trades for this trip. I can plan and initiate instead of stress and react 🙂 Looking forward to that. Though, I find I need big screen real estate these days for analyzing things. I will only have a laptop :<

Stop #2 – Krakow, Poland

We flew into Vienna, spent 7 days and rented a car and made our way to Krakow, Poland. The rental car place told us we couldn’t go through Czech and possibly Poland (but they had to confirm). I told them don’t worry about it, we weren’t going there anyways lol. We did. Those types of small things give me pleasure.

The drive took I think about 4-5 hours. Krakow was one of my favourite stops this trip. Not what I expected. Everything was super cheap, people were friendly and it felt less touristy then other stops. I’ll be going back. We checked out the salt mines but not Auschwitz (next time). The vodka was like $1euro a shot for premium stuff. Delicious. of course we got Perogies several times. I am half Polish so on Christmas Eve, we eat Perogies and Cabbage rolls as a tradition.


The Salt Mines


Enjoying a big beer on a patio. Good times


The kids hanging out next to some sites


Kingstons face as I tell him about Ron Bertino’s Space Trip Trade


Looking Cool as Fuck

This summers Road Trip – Intro and Stop 1: Vienna

This past summer we did a 7 week road trip that started in Vienna and ended in Salzburg. Might be wondering how we pulled off 7 weeks of road trip and only ended up 3 hrs away, well we did one huge ass loop.

1. Vienna, Austria
2. Krakow, Poland
3. Lower Silesia, Poland
4. Dresden, Germany
5. Hanover, Germany
6. Frankfurt, Germany
7. Heidelberg, Germany
8. Aschaffenburg, Germany
9. Freiburg, Germany
10. Tuttlingen, Germany
11. Como, Italy
12. Ranco, Italy
13. Arona, Italy
14. Turin, Italy
15. Lyon, France
16. Milan, Italy
17. Strasbourg, France
18. Nuremburg, Germany
19. Salzburg, Austria (dropped car off)
20. Munich, Germany (By train rom Salzburg)

We always airbnb it except in one area (Arona) where we stay at an amazing B&B (it’s our 5th time)–>Cascina Incocco–>Which I’d highly recommend to anyone. It’s one of my favourite spots.

Some pics from the first stop on the trip:


On the way there!

Vienna – First Stop! Augustiner Yep.

A painting in Emma’s memory match. We’re ticking them off while we travel. Egon Schiele


On to Krakow!